Comment on When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female?
knightly@pawb.social 2 weeks agoI’ll take this as a good faith question, and the short answer is that gender is a lot more complicated than that.
Yes there are two archetypal roles involved in sexual reproduction, but even that isn’t so simple. There isn’t just one feature that defines male or female, but a combination of traits including chromosomes, gametes, anatomy, hormones, etc. In the real world, some folks are born with features that don’t all agree with one or another archetype. Intersex people aren’t common, about 1 in 2,000, but their existence proves that sex isn’t just a binary. There’s diversity to sex that requires a more complicated scheme to account for everybody.
Gender, likewise, doesn’t follow the one-or-the-other model. Most folks are cisgender, but some folks have a gender that doesn’t agree with what people assume their sex is, or no gender at all, or a gender that doesn’t fit into the man/woman spectrum. It gets complicated quickly because gender is where sex and society intersect. Some cultures have different expectations based on gender, and some even have more than two recognized genders.
Cypher@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This argument has always struck me as odd as in virtually every other discussion we would accept that the exception ‘proves the rule’.
Humans have two hands, except when they don’t due to something impacting fetal development.
Humans have two kidneys, except when they don’t due to an error in fetal development or as a result of disease or injury.
Or just let the exceptions be exceptions with no social stigma rather than refusing to recognise that the vast majority of humans, and mammals, can be accurately identified as one of two distinct sexes.